Take out the second from the Detroit trade and sure. We won't pay a second to dump Holl.

lol no. I wouldn't take Holl for free at a cap hit of 3.4m with term. that's insane.

The picks are nice. I'll hard pass on most of these though

That's fine then we just find a different trade partner or buy him out.

The problem with the "bottom out" strategy (besides the point of sports being to win and not lose on purpose) is that you have to be truly atrocious to be in the bottom five. Caps were definitely worse than their record this year but swapping Kuemper, Jensen, Oshie, and TVR for Stevenson, Spence, Lee, and Holl combined with some natural regression isn't making this team the 20 points worse they would've needed to be to finish behind MTL this year.

This would still be a significantly better roster (barring drastic offseason moves) than SJS, CHI, ANA, CBJ, MTL, PHI, UTH, SEA and would be close to OTT, BUF, CGY, PIT, MIN, NSH. Getting down into the SJS/CHI/ANA tier would involve some pretty uncomfortable departures for less than market rate -- Strome, Wilson, Carlson, Lindgren at the least, probably Sandin, McMichael, as well..

Eating 4.5 mill in buyout to save a 2nd round pick would certainly be something

1.13M per year is fine. Paying a second to dump 1.13M when you are a rebuilding team would be something.